This week I had the opportunity to attend the Future of Waste Management and Recycling Conference in London #FutureWaste16 where there were some very interesting talks from different councils, partnerships and businesses from the UK who all have that one common goal, to reduce waste and to increase recycling, that’s just music to my ears!
Now everyone loves a trip out from the office (including me) but I came away with some questions on how we can work to better manage our waste on campus.
Here at the University of Kent all of our general waste goes to an Energy from Waste (EfW) Facility, last year that was 821 tonnes, and it goes through a very clever process of being mixed into hoppers, loaded into a burner and burnt at over 850°C, steam produced then drives a turbine to power a generator which is then used to power the plant itself and the rest is transported to the national grid.
That’s a really basic explanation of how it works and I don’t want to get all technical otherwise you may find your eyes glaze over into a nice little sleep…zzz… but if you want to learn a bit more then watch this short video which shows you the Lakeside EfW where our general waste goes to.
This particular EfW facility produces enough energy to heat over 500,000 homes and any leftover ash is then used as aggregates which is then used in construction, isn’t that great?!
This is a brilliant way to show that even when you cannot recycle an item it can have another use!!
It would be really great if we could further influence the processes that our waste can undertake rather than disposing of it at that horrible place we all know as the landfill site. I wonder if we could develop incredibly like Sweden where there are four local fuel and power companies that live off each other’s waste, so the waste that one company produces is then used as the next company’s fuel. There’s even a mushroom growing company in Norway that used the leftover mushrooms and growing substrates to create green energy for their local area!
There would probably be hundreds of videos that I would recommend you watch to further understand the ways we can dispose of our waste and why it’s so important but I think this one is my favourite!
I think one of the main issues is that when people think of burning waste they think of all those horror stories of releasing co2 into the atmosphere and that it’s bad for the environment, which of course can be true. But if the correct technology is used then rather than being seen as a hindrance it is actually such a benefit for us and for the world around us.
If you only take one thing away from this post let it be this, wasting your waste is such a waste.
Remember to follow us on twitter for any waste and recycling updates, have a lovely weekend!